


Heard Somebody Cry

by rockbrigade



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-21
Updated: 2014-10-21
Packaged: 2018-02-22 01:35:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2489603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rockbrigade/pseuds/rockbrigade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chinen invites Hirakoba to a romantic(?) night at Kogen Hotel, Nakagasuku.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heard Somebody Cry

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this for my sister as an exchange with her. I have never been to Kogen, or Okinawa for that matter, so the hotel they visit is very loosely based on what I could find out about it by researching. Teen and up rating just for the amount of swearing!

Even the triangular shade of the stairwell wall wasn't cool, but where his back touched against the concrete he was made to feel his own sweat in a cold patch between his shoulder blades. At least there was a breeze up on the rooftop, and Hirakoba shook the opening of his shirt, fanning himself, to catch the air. "When the holidays start, I'm gettin' the fuck outta this town," he said. Kai mumbled something in his sleep. "Ey, how can you sleep in this heat?" Hirakoba said, prodding at Kai's shoulder with his foot. Kai rolled onto his back, his shirt riding over his stomach and landing directly in the path of sunlight, but he didn't seem to care. "You're useless," he said. "Hiroshi, where're we goin'? Better be someplace awesome." 

Chinen sat up from lying on the floor, moving his torso ninety degrees without using his hands for support. He made his eyes extra-wide as he peered down at Hirakoba, but he said nothing. Hirakoba punched at Chinen's ankle.

"Come on, I'm not spending the whole summer in this dump, so where're we goin'?" 

Chinen was silent for a time, time enough that Hirakoba forgot he'd asked anything, and when he spoke his words clicked and creaked like a ballroom floor. "Kogen hotel." 

"Hote--" Hirakoba let the word escape into the air. "Man what the fuck?" he said, leaning forwards to get a look at Kai, still fast asleep, then he turned back to Chinen and said in a hush, "Man, what the fuck? You want us to go to…" Chinen didn't blink. A fly landed on Chinen's cheek, and he still didn't blink. "Why the FUCK--" Hirakoba lashed out at the fly on Chinen's behalf, "--would I wanna go to a hotel with you? I'm not a perv!" 

"There are waterslides," Chinen said. 

"Dude, I'm there!" Hirakoba said, suddenly loud enough to make Kai snort and stir in his sleep. Hirakoba watched his face. "B-but like. There's no helping it, right, 'cause you're desperate to go 'n all… so we're like… you want to… spend the night there, or…?" Chinen's back stiffened and his jaw dropped open. Hirakoba glanced at him quickly and then away again, back to Kai, "'Cause like you gotta tell me if it's one o' them hourly places, I'll wear my shades…" 

Chinen's hands were strangely clammy as he snapped up Hirakoba's hand and stared into his eyes. "I want to spend the night there with you," he said. The very peaks of his cheekbones were strangely red, and it made the whites of his eyes look red. He laughed in that creaking, coughing, whooping-like way, and Hirakoba snatched his hand away and wiped it on his trousers. 

"Alright, calm down, don't like wet yourself," he said, "I said I'd go already. I'll just tell my mom there's someone who desperately needs my dick." He snorted in laughter at himself, but of course when he was all ready to go he just said he'd be staying at Hiroshi's place, and had to stop himself from flipping off the door as he left to her calls of, don't cause any trouble! 

It seemed like they passed through most of town, and many different hotels, before Hirakoba finally asked, "are we fuckin' lost, Hiroshi?" Chinen continued to stagger forward, his shoulders drooping enough to make his arms swing loose, and Hirakoba noticed people crossing the street up ahead to avoid them. "Afraid I'm gonna mug ya, suckers?" he yelled, and chuckled to himself when it made them scurry faster. Nobody approached them. Nobody walked past them. Nobody was up ahead of them. The road seemed to stretch out as far as Hirakoba could see. They walked in the shade of the trees that lined the road, but it made no difference. "I need a shower when we get there," Hirakoba said. 

Nothing but the chirping of insects from the jungle and the heat in the air. A signpost caught Hirakoba's eye. "Dude are we staying in a castle!?" he said, impressed. Chinen stopped in his tracks, staring at something in the distance. Then he primed himself, leaning forward on his bent knee with his other leg stretched taut behind him. 

"Rin, can you use Shukuchihou from here?"

"From--?" Chinen was still staring ahead of him. "Yo, the fuck you think I am? 'Course I can do it, I dance harder than this weak-ass trek of yours!" But he puffed a bit, getting into stance beside Chinen.

"Follow," Chinen said. He tensed, and then he was gone, and Hirakoba ran up to him in the quick bursts that Kite had taught them to use. Mid-flight, he saw the ticket booth for the castle disappear behind them, but Chinen pressed on in a wide arc, passing the castle, and stopping on the green behind it. He stood in front of the 'Do Not Enter' sign, casting his head about, it seemed absently, his frame languid and indifferent. Hirakoba scowled at him, kicking a foot out against his calf, and then shaded his eyes with one hand, scanning the area. He saw it. How had it not seen it. One ugly-ass cuboid after another looming out of the jungle, stretching back in a ramshackle tower. And Chinen tugged at his sleeve. "Rin. Can I borrow your phone?" 

Hirakoba gaped at the building, and when he turned, he was gaping at Chinen, and while he did this he groped uselessly at his pocket for his phone before he realised what Chinen had said. He shook his arms away from his body in a violent move, "wha, fuck no you can't borrow my phone! Use your own phone! Whaddya want it for anyway?" He gestured sharply toward the building, "and what the fuck is that thing?" 

Chinen's shoulders drooped. "I wanted to take a picture of the hotel. I don't have a phone, so…" Hirakoba felt a chill on his heart, and he placed his hand on his phone and considered. Then Chinen brought a horrible cardboard-covered disposable camera out of his pocket, the creak of his thumb scraping against the winder wheel grating away all Hirakoba's sympathy. 

"How can you even carry that thing!" But Chinen squinted down the lens and snapped away merrily. "Why would you even want pictures of… wait a minute, THAT's the hotel?" 

"Let's go in," he said, pushing aside the wire mesh fence with a lazy kick. 

"THAT's the hotel? Hiroshi!" Hirakoba was too angry to really enjoy the breaking and entering, "Hiroshi, what the fuck? You said there were waterslides, man!" But Chinen wandered forward, head in the sky, slowly sweeping the place with his eyes. He stretched his arms out ahead of him like some kind of zombie, and when his fingertips reached the dirty grey, he let out a low, guttural chuckle. Rotten, graffiti-marked chipboard panels covered what might've been windows. Chinen tilted his torso to the side, his arms dangling loose as he examined the board. Then he slowly raised a crooked finger and pointed to it. 

"There's a hole. It's the entrance." Chinen tried to lay a spooky silence between his creaking utterances, but Hirakoba clicked his tongue and kicked his foot in the dirt - mostly 'cause he felt a chill cross his shoulders at that precise moment and he didn't want Chinen to think he was shuddering. Chinen pushed the board with his hand, and it swung to the side with ease as if it had been stapled to the wall by a single corner. Chinen slipped through the hole and was gone, the board swinging free behind him. Hirakoba watched it shunting back and forth in the window frame, and considered turning around and heading home. It was eerily quiet with Chinen sealed off behind the giant freaky cat-flap. The wind picked up, and as it whistled around the husk of the tower up ahead, it mumbled and hissed like faint voices on the breeze, and Hirakoba shuddered after all, pushing his way inside to find Chinen. To keep an eye on him. Yeah. In case he like. Gets arrested. 

Hirakoba blinked, expecting pitch darkness, but squinting out from under his eyelashes he found the room to be light. He looked around. Debris everywhere, and a slanting corridor leading away somewhere, and nothing really out of the ordinary. A cold hand touched his shoulder and he shrieked. "Hiroshi! The fuck!" he yelped. He had to cough to get his voice back to a low pitch, "do that again and I'll mess you up!"

"I'm home," Chinen said, in a way that was loud and deliberate enough to make Hirakoba turn to check that they were the only ones in the room. They were. Of course they were. He shrugged violently to free himself from Chinen's grip and picked his way towards a graffiti mural on the far wall. 

"Ain't even anything here, 'cept these sweet tags," Hirakoba said, tracing his fingers along the curve of the design. Twisting, like a habu. "Like, I don't get why a pile of rusty trash is such a big deal." 

"Rusty trash?" Chinen stopped still in the centre of the room and Hirakoba could feel a hard stare at the back of his head. "Rusty trash!? This is Kogen. This is without a doubt, Okinawa's number one, unprecedented, ultimate leisure attraction complex! You can't call a place like this -- a jewel in the heart of the jungle -- you can't call it a rusty trash pile, that's--" there was a long, low, but distinct call from deeper within the building, a sorrowful male voice. Hirakoba stared at the corridor, and out of the corner of his eye he noticed that Chinen was staring, too. Just on the other end of that corridor. Hirakoba looked at Chinen, his eyes flicking frantically in the direction of the noise. Chinen's eyes bulged, and he said, with an eerie calm, "you can't call it that, Rin. That's disrespectful." 

"Disrespe--" Hirakoba's voice was too high again, so he bit back his word to continue in a seething whisper, "look, I don't give a shit, man, what the shit was that noise just now??" Chinen turned his face toward the corridor and plodded forward, as if he hadn't heard Hirakoba at all. "Oh no, aw fuck no!" Hirakoba scrambled after Chinen, pulling at his wrist, "you tell me what the goddamn noise was, Hiroshi!" 

Chinen stopped. He turned his head to look at Hirakoba. "There is a curse on this land," he said, "the restless ones curse the people that come here. The ones that are… disrespectful." 

"And you want me to spend the night here!?" Chinen's lips curved into an unnatural little smile. "No, man, I ain't doin' it, I'm cuttin' man," Hirakoba said, shoving Chinen's chest and marching back towards the boarded windows. 

"You runnin' away?" Chinen said. Hirakoba stopped. He scratched his hair, then he turned back to Chinen. Chinen began to walk in the direction of the voice. Hirakoba had every intention of following, but dread in his chest made his feet heavy. "Don't be afraid," Chinen said as he sloped away, and Hirakoba spat at the ground and took a step forward, "we mean you no disrespect, spirit." 

"Oh great, Hiroshi, don't fuckin' TALK to it!" He stood on tiptoe, on the border where the room met the corridor, but couldn't bring himself to cross it. He clenched his fists and spun around, scanning the room. A chair with metal legs had been upended and left to rust. It'll do. He took the end of one of the chair legs in both hands and tried to force it downwards. It gave slightly, so he held the bar straight and brought the full force of his foot down at the join, and it came away. Hirakoba twirled the bar in his hand, tossing it lightly, testing the weight, then he held it aloft and struck. The air around him rang as he sliced through it, and his hair shook over his face the way it did during a game. He gripped the bar. Ain't no way fuckin' ghosts could take that feeling away, and weapon primed, he stalked through the corridor after Chinen. 

The corridor twisted weirdly, and the floor sloped down, then up, and yet the holes cut for the windows remained level so at odd times they seemed too high or too low. And then the passage eased outwards, and Hirakoba was standing in what might have been a lobby, with a curving white desk and a large staircase ahead of him. And, you know, the boulder, because you can't call it a hotel lobby without a giant frickin' boulder. Chinen was standing beside the rock and gazing up at the ceiling in fascination. Hirakoba relaxed his hold on the metal bar and scowled. He saw a piece of plastic toilet seat at his feet, and stomped on it. Toilet cubicles, of course, in a lobby, why the heck not. 

"Isn't it beautiful?" Chinen said, not once having looked down from his examination of the holes in the ceiling. 

"No, man, it's fucked up! Did you see the guy who made the noise, or what?" 

There was a pause. Chinen slowly, solemnly lowered his gaze to look at Hirakoba. "It's… fucked up, you said? Not beautiful? Fucked up!?" 

Hirakoba frowned, turning his body loosely to gesture around him, and spat in a way he thought was self-explanatory. "Like, who the fuck built this place, man?" 

"Nobody special," Chinen said, lowering his head til his shoulders drooped forward, "just my late father."

Ouch. Hirakoba bit his lip and ran a hand through his hair. "So he did die then… your father…" Chinen nodded and wiped a straight finger under one of his eyes and sniffed loudly.

"Yes, he died, but not before--" Chinen moved with shukuchihou, and Hirakoba couldn't track him with his eyes, "--he went mad!" he said, into Hirakoba's ear from behind him. Hirakoba yelped and swung his metal bar, but Chinen was back beside the boulder again.

"The shit!" Hirakoba put a hand over his chest, recovering his breath, "Hiroshi you do that again, I'mma brain ya," maybe not even on purpose. 

"Kogen… Kogen was my father's dream," Chinen said, spreading his arms wide over his head. "He wanted to make Okinawa's greatest leisure land, but the more he built, the crazier he went." He stopped in the middle of his monologue, his chest heaving, and his beady eyes rolled about in their sockets as if they were following the trail of a fly. "He… he would call me and say things like, Hiroshi, I can smell time," Hirakoba narrowed his eyes, "and, and… Hiroshi, weather forecasts are unreliable--" 

"Well, no shit--" but Chinen raised his voice steadily until it seemed to ring around the lobby.

"--or that no matter how many times I washed my hair, the waves would still consume us all someday…" 

"The what?" Something about that one gave Hirakoba the creeps.

"Before anyone knew it, Kogen was like this." Chinen laid his palms out flat. "Doors to nowhere. Stairs through walls. Lobby toilets." Well, that explains it. Chinen senior went cuckoo, and bam, boulder centrepiece. Hirakoba kicked a small, round piece of rubble and watched it fly into a toilet stall. Wouldn't be surprised if there was a store of bald tennis balls around here somewhere. And the ceiling above them creaked, in a tentative rhythm at first, but then heavier, faster, someone was running above them and dust showered down upon them as the footsteps disappeared into the distance. 

"So, wait," Hirakoba said, pointing a shaking finger up to the ceiling, "so if this place is only messed up because your dad lost it, then… Man, didn't you say something about… spirits?" 

"Went crazy because of spirits," Chinen shrugged. 

"The fuck, so that… so that was," Hirakoba remembered his metal bar and gripped it 'til his knuckles were white, "a-and the voice before, that was…?" 

"I forgot to say. Yeah. I think it was probably just… my father." With perfect timing, above them came an agonised scream. "Father!?" Chinen called, and he hurried up the steps after it.

"Hiroshi!" Hirakoba's voice hissed between a shout and a whisper, as he steadied the metal bar and ran after Chinen, "Hiroshi, we better not have come here for some kind of fucked up family reunion!" The corridor Hirakoba landed on was darker than the lobby had been, with a mess of debris scattered about and disappearing into hazy silhouettes deeper into the hotel. Light was streaming in through shattered splints of doors dotted along the corridor - here and there were pools of blackness where a door stood curiously intact, or where an object from within the room obscured the window. Hirakoba squinted, trying to get a fix on Chinen in the dark. Then he heard the creaking, ticking, scraping of the winder wheel on that stupid dinosaur camera coming from just inside one of the rooms. 

Chinen stood just inside an otherwise empty doorframe, looking like a strange stretched out shadow before the bright afternoon sun. Hirakoba pushed past Chinen, and shaded his eyes with his hand. From inside, it looked like the husk of a hotel room, but on the other side of the door lay flat, empty roof. Grey concrete pillars held up a ceiling above them, and to the right there were sloping downwards steps surrounded by barrier walls, and beyond and below it all, jungle bubbling up to meet them. Chinen curved his back as he looked through the viewfinder, scanning with it for something, then snapping the shutter. 

"What are ya even snappin' at, man, looks like a fuckin' parking lot!" But Hirakoba was glad to be out in the sun. He wandered over to the steps and put his hand on the walkway wall, out of the shade from the ceiling above. The concrete was warm and pleasant. And then Hirakoba looked down at the steps. "Hey, there's graffiti here," he said. He stared at it. "The fuck does it say? Why would anyone write it in English!" 

"Army base," Chinen said, close behind Hirakoba, too close for comfort, and Hirakoba jumped and bashed the back of his head on Chinen's elbow. "It says, always fear what you can't see."

Hirakoba rubbed at his head, "Oh great, thanks for the advice, fuckin--" A light, yelping laugh floated up the walkway stairs, and when they followed the direction of the noise, they saw a distant dark figure disappearing out of view. "The wha--"

"Ah. I guess that means we don't have to fear it," Chinen said. He tested the strength of the stair with one foot, and then descended, his knees bending up at a weird angle with each successive step. The walkway stairs curved off in strange angles, flattened out onto path and then turned sharply again. As they moved across it, a huge clump of jungle trees loomed closer, with strange, thin lines of yellow, blue and red poking out of the thicket. 

Hirakoba tilted his head back, with his fingers lined up straight against his brow. "Are those… don't tell me, are those the waterslides?" Chinen stopped walking. He looked up, stretching up to his full height, then nodded. "They look like they woulda been kickass waterslides," Hirakoba said quietly. The stairs rounded another corner, and someone was standing at the bottom of them. Hirakoba lifted his metal bar. The figure seemed to look up. It yelped at them, and then jumped up and down, and then missed its landing and crumpled into a pile on the floor. Hirakoba lowered the bar. 

"Yuujirou." Hirakoba and Chinen said at once. 

Kai was still rolling about, grasping at his knee, when they had climbed down to him. "Hey!" he said, cheerfully, through grunts of pain. Hirakoba thrust a foot out onto Kai's ribcage and pushed down until Kai was forced to stop writhing.

"How the fuck did you get out here?" Hirakoba said, having his ankle slapped repeatedly, but ignoring it.

"I followed ya," Kai said, with a wheeze, "Saw you getting on a bus so I ran… stop pressing so hard! It hurts!" Hirakoba lifted his shoe, and Kai shifted himself up and rubbed at his side. "Anyway, so yeah, then I ended up here!" 

"How did you get here before us?" Chinen said. A fly flew out from the trees and Kai followed it intently with his eyes. "Yuujirou." 

"Hm? Oh the monk dude, I asked him to help me find ya! I think I got mixed up a few times, though--" the fly landed on the walkway wall, and Kai smacked his hand against it to squish it, but missed, and cursed and shook his hand. "But we found each other," he said, in a strained way. 

"Monk dude?" Hirakoba could see Chinen's lips curving up at the edges. Maybe he shouldn't have asked.

"Yeah, he's in there!" Kai said, pointing with enthusiasm through a rough hole in the wall, like someone had smashed through the bricks with a sledgehammer. Hirakoba followed the direction of Kai's finger. Nothing. He was relieved, at first, before he found a reason that seeing nothing could be much, much worse. "Huh?" Kai said, seeing Hirakoba's expression, and he looked into the hole himself, "hey, where'd ya go old geezer?" He got up and dashed into the building.

"Yuujirou--!" Hirakoba called too late. He stood shoulder to shoulder with Chinen, on either side of the hole, squinting into the dark beyond. He strained his ears to hear Kai's footsteps, movement, anything, but the chirping of the insects just got louder and louder, and nothing inside the building moved. 

"Maybe that wasn't really Yuujirou," Chinen said, "maybe Yuujirou was just a disguise, to get us to go inside the buil--" 

"Fuck off!" Hirakoba said, tilting his head to try and see further through the hole, "Yuujirou's in there, okay, he's just… takin' a piss or somethin'." 

"But if it wasn't him," Chinen said, through Hirakoba's loud cursing, "then what did you put your foot on, Rin?" 

"Fuck OFF, that's why I'm tellin' ya, it was him, okay, so fuck off already!" The wind picked up again, and Hirakoba wrapped his arms around his chest and rubbed them. "He'll be back any second," he said.

"It's okay, we have all night," Chinen said, a note more cheerful than Hirakoba liked. Hirakoba turned to him, scowling, arching his shoulders.

"No, man, fuck you! The minute he gets back here, we're outta here, all of us!" 

"The minute he gets back," Chinen said darkly, "might never arrive, Rin." Hirakoba shoved Chinen against the wall, and the was a call from inside and approaching footsteps. 

"Heeey, guess what, dude gave me this leaflet thing!" Kai grinned at them, clutching a faded paper. Hirakoba could've knocked Kai cold in that moment, heck, he could get Chinen for a twofer, but he didn't want to be left alone in this trash pile. Chinen took the leaflet, pinching opposite corners with each finger and thumb, and holding it close to his face. 

"Kogen's brochure," he said. Hirakoba snatched it off him. 

"So this is your dad's brochure, huh? Any pictures of him?" He pointed to a dude on the front, "this him?" Chinen opened his mouth to answer, when Kai butted in,

"Ehh!? This your dad's hotel? So are you like the king of the hotel, now, or what?" Kai grinned at him. Hirakoba took another look at the brochure. 

"I suppose," Chinen said, "my dad built this place before he went crazy and died," and he sounded a little too happy about it. 

"Wait, Hiroshi, this brochure says the grand opening is in the 70s?" Hirakoba narrowed his eyes at Chinen, holding the leaflet out to him. 

"Aww man, your dad died in the 70s?" Kai's smile had faded, "That sucks, man, I think my dad was only just born in the 70s, kinda sucks if you never knew him." 

"Wait, what?" Hirakoba began, but Chinen folded the leaflet into his pocket quickly,

"Yeah, truly sad, never even knew 'im, shall we go…?" 

"You said before he'd call you and--" 

"Let's go inside!" Chinen said. He had the nerve to shukuchihou through the opening in the wall, just out of range of Hirakoba's grasp. Kai ran after him.

"I'll introduce you to the monk dude," he called, his voice disappearing into the hotel, "you should see him Rin, he has super freaky eyes!" 

Hirakoba looked at the hole in the wall, and then he looked back up the stairs. The sunlight was still lighting up the stairs at the top, the way back out. From inside the hotel, he could hear the grinding of Chinen's camera as he wound back the film, and Kai calling out aimlessly, laughing at his own echoes. Hirakoba threw his head back and sighed. He turned the metal bar in his hand and walked in after them. Shading his eyes, it took a while for them to adjust to the dark, but when they did, he realised they were in the remains of a grungy pink bathroom. Just ahead of him was a large pink tub, and mouldy tiles in a matching shade made up a partition wall. Chinen was taking photos of the corners of the room, and Kai was peering out of the doorway, jabbering away at no one. 

Hirakoba let his shoulders relax, and backed up against the tiled partition, eyes on the stained ceiling. Something hit his foot. He reached down and picked up the marker pen, rolling it over his fingers, and then glancing to see whether Chinen or Kai had thrown it, but they hadn't moved. Hirakoba shrugged and snapped off the cap, and as he raised it against the tile he could smell a waft of sour chemical from the ink. It still wrote. He let his eyes follow the flow of the black lines as he drew out his signature habu tag. Then in small, awkward numbers, he wrote the year beneath the tip of its tail. 

"That's cool," Chinen said, suddenly behind Hirakoba. Hirakoba tensed his shoulders to stop himself from jumping out of his skin. Again. 

"Thanks…?" Hirakoba squinted up at Chinen. "Whaddya want?" 

Chinen scratched his arm and looked idly at the wall. "Wanna kiss?" 

"No," Hirakoba said. And then in a hushed voice, "the fuck anyway, Yuujirou's right over there." 

"It's okay. That's not the real Yuujirou." 

Hirakoba spat. "Fuck you," he said, but he held his arms up, and Chinen leaned forwards towards him. Hirakoba managed to bend his arms around Chinen's shoulders without hitting Chinen's head with the metal bar, or scraping his face with the marker. Which was a shame, really. 

"Yeah, this way, mister!" Kai said, as he got closer. Hirakoba dropped the marker and then punched Chinen in the stomach and moved away from him. Chinen was still reeling when Kai came into view. "See, mister, I told you!" he said.

There was no one behind Kai. Kai looked behind him and grinned. 

"Yuujirou, I don't see anyone." Chinen said. His voice sounded fine, but his eyes were watering. 

"Aw, don't be rude!" Kai said, turning around. "Dun worry, mister, Chinen says that about everyone 'cause he's tall! Tell 'im, Rin!" 

"Yuujirou, step back from there," Hirakoba said, and Kai shrugged and gaped at him, "just, man, let's just get out of here, okay?" Chinen snapped a picture, the flash getting in Kai's eyes and making him wince. Hirakoba flinched and dropped the metal bar, and it rang against the tiles. "Hiroshi!" 

"The hell, Hiroshi! That ain't polite, man," Kai rubbed his eyes. "You okay, mister?" he said, but he turned his head rapidly, "Hey, where'd he go?" 

"I ain't stickin' around to find out, man, let's split," Hirakoba said, pushing past Chinen and escaping onto the walkway. He heard their footsteps behind him, and they called to him to wait, but he kept his eyes focused on the spot of sunlight at the top of the stairs. The higher he got, the more a soft breeze blew through his hair, and the sound of it as it rushed through the jungle trees calmed him. And on the top step it said, always fear what you can't see, and his stomach churned so he turned back. Chinen and Kai were climbing after him, each of them clutching their injured sides and looking faintly disappointed. Fuckin' losers. "Yo, hurry it up!" he said, with a laugh. And for just a second, he felt the cloying feeling of someone breathing down his neck, and turning, there was no one. He shuddered in the wind and waited. 

Hirakoba stayed up through the night, the next few nights, and slept in the day. Summer, that's what you do, right, get in bed once the sun rises. The day came when his grandmother let herself in and woke him by opening the curtains and letting the midday sun stream onto his face. He swore, and she shook her knotted finger at him, and he immediately regretted it. Then Kai and Chinen piled into his room. Kai stood on Hirakoba's foot and nearly tripped, while Chinen nodded to Hirakoba's grandmother and eased the door closed behind her. "Piss off," Hirakoba said, when he was sure his grandmother had left. 

"Hiroshi's pictures came out!" Kai said, shaking Hirakoba's chest. Hirakoba punched his arm, and sat up, rubbing his eyes so hard he stretched his eyelids open. 

"And? Why d'ya think I care?" he said, but he had a bad feeling. Chinen was shuffling through a pile of printed photos, until finally, he threw the sheaf onto Hirakoba's lap. At the top was the picture of Kai, his face close to the camera, convulsed in a startled expression, and close to his shoulder, the face of a man. Shaved short hair, like a monk, and deep round eyes, black and with no light in them, almost as if they were just empty sockets. Hirakoba lifted the pile of photographs and stared. Kai craned his head to take a look.

"He WAS there!" Kai said, "I knew you were just messin', Hiroshi, tellin' me ya didn't see no one!" Hirakoba dropped the pile of photographs and tried to swallow, but his throat was still dry from sleep. "Eh, what's up Rin? You look like you've seen a ghost!"


End file.
